


Age, and other artificial concepts

by Trojie



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-19
Updated: 2010-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-12 00:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <b>reel_merlin</b>. Peter and his siblings are called back to Narnia, to help Prince Caspian, and it's like a reawakening for Peter ... but he feels like there's some other revelation waiting beneath the surface.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Age, and other artificial concepts

**Author's Note:**

> \- Crossover by character fusion, necessitating some departures from the events of the film.  
> \- Everyone's aged up to the age they look in the film, not the age Lewis wrote them.  
> \- Characters are (just) of age in the UK but underage in the US.
> 
> Betaread by my Cap'n and shipmate Ineptshieldmaid, whom I inveigled into having some shoreleave from the good ship Edmund/Caspian to help me out.

_Peter_

Sometimes you just have to do what's _right_. And it's not right to let someone get away with bullying, even if they're bullying him, Peter Pevensie, who could quite easily beat them both with one hand tied behind his back, had they swords. However, they don't have swords, they just have two adolescent bodies considerably bigger than his, and he's out of practice at hand-to-hand combat and out of practice at fighting with growing pains and so maybe they are getting the upper hand.

A bit.

But he couldn't just have let them get away with it, even if there had been three or four of them, because if they'll try it on him they'll try it on someone smaller.

Sometimes you just have to stand up to people. Even if they beat you.

They charge him, and he tries to fold so they miss him but he misjudges it, his limbs ganglier and more out of proportion than he remembers, and they catch him shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, two of them ploughing him backwards through the crowd, and as they do so he catches Susan's eye, scanning the area desperately, he assumes for him.

She can't do anything even but roll her eyes at him. Lucy is with her - he assumes Lucy brought her here - and Lucy herself looks both terrified and excited, like she'd like to help. Peter's smashed to the ground after that, his head perilously close to the rails, over the edge of the platform. He hears the beating of his own heart so loudly in that moment, remembers how he would normally call on Aslan's guidance and brace himself and win, but it doesn't _work_ here-

'Edmund!' Lucy cries out piercingly above the noise of the crowd, and suddenly the weight is lifted from Peter's torso and he bulls upwards, angry that his brother would do something so stupid as get involved in a fight. Doesn't he realise he could get in trouble for this? Get hurt?

Fortunately for Peter's sanity, Edmund's stint in the fight doesn't last long - they're broken up by angry grown-ups. Peter's shaken roughly and told to act his age, which is a damn' good joke when you think about it.

'You're welcome,' Edmund tells him sulkily as they pick their things up.

'I had it sorted,' is Peter's only retort. Edmund snorts as he slumps on the bench. Sometimes it seems to Peter that they're only not fighting each other when they're fighting other people, but Edmund is the biggest cause of annoyance and tooth-grinding Peter knows - he just has this way of looking at things that makes _no sense_ to Peter - until Peter needs an ally, and there Edmund is at his right hand.

One year since Narnia, and Susan's lost none of her queenliness and Lucy none of her lioness's tenacity, and Edmund watches himself and watches Peter harder, and basically they are all waiting. _O Aslan, O son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, let us back in_. It twangs in the steel of Peter's spine like taut bowstring, that feeling of anticipation, and yet _specifics_ of Narnia are impossible to grasp, veiled by England's walls and fog, Peter supposes.

Narnia hits them all at the speed of an express-train, appropriately, while they wait on the platform.

And then everything is burning sunlight across retinas and memories like reopened wounds or rediscovered treasures or both. But even in that mess, Peter feels something's wrong. He feels it first on the beach, when Edmund sees the ruins, and it burns stronger and stronger as the day wears on.

 _'I wonder who lived here?'_ Lucy asks, the optimist (always the first to see Magic, but the last to suspect it).

 _'I think we did,'_ , Susan replies, the realist, cool eyes picking out chess-clues in the grass.

 _'This didn't just happen. Cair Paravel was attacked,'_ says Edmund, the pessimist. He picks at stones in the grass, looks out over the horizon, probably sees ships in his mind with catapults at the ready.

Peter says nothing. Something kittenish plays at the back of his mind, urges him to find their treasure-room. He obeys - he's always done as Magic bids him, and he knows it when it calls, cat-footed and prickle-pawed. It's when he picks up his sword that Peter _knows_ that something's wrong.

 _'I think it's time we found out what's going on.'_

***

Lucy insists on wearing a gown from her trove, and won't let Edmund shorten the hems with his dagger. Instead she struts around on the tips of her toes and with one hand bunched in fabric, hauling it up so that she can walk, while the other hand settles around her little knife, and more importantly, the diamond flask Father Christmas gave her so long ago. Peter has to smile, she's so proud of herself, and she smiles back at him -

 _She's crying._

He wishes she wouldn't cry, would do anything to stop her tears, but he can't. Can't tell her 'I'm like you.'

Can't tell her, 'It's magic, you're not mad, m'lady, you're magic.'

Can't tell her it's a gift, it's power, it's for good, it's for using. She thinks she's a candle streaming in the wind, flickering before it snuffs itself out. She thinks she's mad. He can't tell her what she wants to hear; she's an ember, she's potentiality.

He has to keep her safe, and she's safer unknowing. She's safer crying -

'I was so tall,', Lucy said in the treasure room, and Peter suddenly sees a fair-skinned, black-haired woman wielding a blade like an extension of her hand, tending a boy's wounds, looking at Peter like she sees through him, all fire and nobility ... and he sees a little girl, blonde hair and freckles -

'Peter?'

'I-'

'Peter!' Both Peter and Lucy look up at that. Susan waves them over, an arrow nocked to her bowstring. Edmund stands with her, and as Peter and Lu crest the rise they're standing on they see, in the inlet between Cair Paravel and what Peter assumes is the mainland, a rowboat with two uniformed men in it, about to toss a ... a dwarf? into the sea.

'Drop him!' Susan commands, all queenly in her tone, and Peter is moving already, he knows, just as the dwarf does (Peter can see his horrified expression behind his gag), exactly what the soldiers are likely to do with an instruction like that.

The water is cold, it makes Peter gasp as he casts around for his target, and a splash behind him is Edmund - he'll go for the boat, knowing Peter has the rescue in hand and also that they'll need a boat (again, they don't think the same way - if Ed had gone for the dwarf, Peter would have gone to help him before thinking of anything else). A dull thud somewhere ahead is an armoured body hitting the water - good old Su - but that doesn't matter, because _here_ is a hand, grasping, and _here_ is someone kicking strongly to the surface with bound feet, and Peter drags them up and -

 _He's not breathing. Magic sold him and magic will buy him back as soon as they're ashore, chainmail is heavy in water though, but giving up is not an option. Peter has to get him to the surface, fights breaking water (waves in a lake, Sidhe-work) to do so and struggles to shore carrying the man supposed to unite this land, who_ isn't breathing _-_

Peter throws himself out of memory as he throws himself out of the water with the definitely breathing and most definitely kicking dwarf. He shakes his suddenly-aching head and tries to work out what's wrong as Lucy cuts the dwarf's ties. It feels like memory, but whose?

The dwarf spits out his gag, absolutely irate. 'Drop. Him? That's the best you could come up with?'

Susan goes to apologise, but Peter has to cut in - she has nothing to apologise for, except for doing what she always does, which is help people. 'Perhaps you'd rather we'd let you drown?' he says, summoning all the haughtiness he ever knew and shoving away the feeling that he learnt it from someone else. It feels like he's wearing someone else's mannerisms like a second skin when he introduces himself and some little imp prods him to add 'The Magnificent', which the bards used to call him. His sisters and brother laugh at him, and _that's_ a familiar feeling, and even the dwarf, Trumpkin, cracks a smile at it.

And then, of course, because no-one believes that two gangly boys, a girl new-come to womanhood and another tripping over her own skirts could be their mystical reinforcements (which just goes to show that people generally don't understand the ways of Magic), they have to prove themselves.

Edmund beats Trumpkin at swordplay, because he fortified talent with constant practice, and clearly his body remembers. Watching him fence is an old pastime, an old pleasure, to see skill exercised. Peter is a bit jealous, actually - he isn't sure _he's_ still so assured. His arms and legs feel all wrong, too long.

Susan is less keen to face Trumpkin in a contest of archery, but when she draws her bow she still smiles, feels joy in the well-oiled yew and the craft of bending. It's like Peter's memory was stacked in layers, and coming through to Narnia has peeled an onionskin's thickness of them away, so things only dimly felt in England are bright and eyeburningly sharp now, and things that he never even considered are teasing at his senses behind frosted glass.

When the target apple falls, and Trumpkin's arguments with it, the dwarf tells his tale. The Narnia they knew is gone, ruled by a tyrant, and the Old Narnians are in hiding or dead. The trees don't dance any more, and Magic is unheard of, illegal and punishable by death. There's a prince, though, the exiled son of the tyrant. He is a friend of Old Narnia, and his name is Caspian.

Peter knows what he has to do. His own throne is gone, broken on a hillside and overgrown with grass, but Narnia needs a king, and he will give her one.

Caspian. Whoever he is, Peter hopes he's up to it.

***

 _Caspian_

It's just this automatic reaction, to see the flash of a sword and cut in under it to parry the blow, and of course it doesn't stop there, and Caspian doesn't even get a look at his opponent until their sword is stuck in a _tree_ and their eyes meet breathlessly and he thinks 'Dear Aslan, Merlin, you couldn't be more of an incompetent idiot if you _tried_ ', and then he rather has a start, because who the hell is Merlin?

Meanwhile the foe is panting and wrestling with his blade, and his blond hair has fallen in his eyes, and Caspian's brain is suddenly full of legends. Two girls and another boy step through the trees, looking wary.

'High King Peter?' he asks, somewhere between gratified, relieved, that they're here at last, and annoyed, because they're here at last, just when he's starting to get things under control.

'I believe you called?' Peter says, with a smirk, and that's roughly when Caspian decides he's not letting some snotty upstart have the upper hand. He may be disowned, but he's noble-born, raised to take kingship from the cradle, and who is some teenage peasant compared to that, specially chosen or not?

There's something about Peter, though. He just can't quite put his finger on it.

Caspian has been fighting this underhanded and stealthy war for three months now, since his father decided that a young and popular heir was a danger to his position (probably talked into it by his troll of a second wife, Caspian thinks bitterly), and that it might just be safer to have him locked up out of sight for a while. Caspian took exception to that plan, and long story short, ended up breaking himself and a dwarf, Trumpkin, out of the dungeons of the castle at Beaversdam and going on the run.

It was never meant to come to this - he meant to hide out in the woods for a while until his father cooled down, and then let himself get caught by a patrol, and be in disgrace for a while, and then everything would be back to normal. He never meant to blow Queen Susan's horn.

But then again, he didn't expect the first patrol to have orders to come back with his head as the preferred option.

He actually didn't expect to meet Trumpkin in the dungeons, either, or to meet Trumpkin's friends later. He'd been taught as a child that the Old Narnians were dead, gone. But he's been to their homes now, and he's seen their families, and they are poorer, and stronger, and angrier than anyone he's seen before. This is their country, and Caspian's father, all of Caspian's ancestors, have not only stolen it but tried to exterminate all these people who live here. They haven't succeeded, and Trumpkin and Nikabrik maintain they never will. Glenstorm says that now is their time to strike.

Caspian can't turn his back on them. A king who starves children and murders farmers deserves to be overthrown. And so now the ex-crown prince of Narnia is spearheading a revolution against his own father. Who does that? What kind of prince overthrows his own father? Never in Telmarine history has such a thing happened, although sometimes when Caspian dreamt as a little boy he dreamt he took up arms against his father, just like he dreamt his mother came back and told him she was proud of him.

Peter doesn't ask about any of this, of course - or at least, he doesn't ask Caspian. He asks Glenstorm and Reepicheep how the war's going, what they've done so far. He ignores Caspian - not deliberately, Caspian realises after a while, but just because he's more used to Centaurs and Talking Mice.

By the time they make it back to Aslan's How, Caspian feels he has a pretty good handle on High King Peter. He's headstrong, wilful, smartmouthed. Thinks he knows it all. And no head for tactics, either. He just seems to throw himself bodily at challenges and hope they succumb, if his suggestions in conversation are anything to go by. It only gets worse when they meet to discuss the state of the conflict officially. Peter immediately suggests attacking the castle.

'We should dig in,' Caspian argues. 'We've got a fortress here. Make them come to us, stretch their supply lines. They're terrified of the woods, anyway. We have the advantage here. We shouldn't throw that away!'

'They're already on their way - they're leaving themselves vulnerable! We can _do_ this!'

There's a rumble of agreement from the assembled people - Fauns, Talking Animals, not the audiences Caspian was trained to address, although he's been working on it. Apparently they're the kind of audiences _Peter_ is used to addressing, though. He fits in here, all subterranean fire and bas-relief and drama. Despite all the, well, Talking Animals and things, Caspian has managed not to think about the nagging presence of Magic so far. It's easier when it's people that need freeing from under the heel of a tyrant. It's when Magic gets involved that Caspian starts thinking too much. Magic is what he's always been told his ancestors saved Narnia from, the chokehold it had on the land; they brought civilisation and monarchy and stability.

Peter looks like the very incarnation of Magic, with a stone lion, stone Table backdrop to his profile as he argues passionately for this stupid, showy sortie.

Is he inviting chaos back in? His father is in the wrong, but does that mean his father was wrong about this? Peter's eyes are mountain-mist blue when he glares at Caspian, but the firelight flashes gold on his eyelashes when he turns away, and something clenches in Caspian's gut when he sees it, something secret and guilty and protective.

'If we _can_ take their castle, we'll leave them with nowhere to run,' Edmund offers. 'We can use their fear of the woods to our advantage best if they haven't anywhere to hide,' he adds. He looks apologetically at Caspian as he says it.

Susan is looking at Peter, though. She shrugs. 'We've got a better chance if we hold out here.' It looks almost like it's coming to a vote (and everyone is subtly shuffling towards Peter's side, Caspian can't help but notice), until Lucy, who has been frowning as she watches the conversation, finally says something. 'You're all acting like there's only two options - dying here or dying there.' Her fingers twitch over her dagger hilt as she says it, and when Peter quirks a brotherly eyebrow at her, waiting for explanation, she raises her eyes to the image of Aslan behind him.

Peter scowls. 'I think we've waited for Aslan long enough.'

Caspian wasn't waiting for him at all, actually, but apparently Aslan comes part and parcel with the Kings and Queens of Old (he can _hear_ the capital letters slot into place every time a Narnian says the words, and he's started unconsciously enunciating them himself) and, fool that he was, he was the one who called them.

He needs Peter. He doesn't want to, but he does, if only because the Narnians won't argue with him. If only Caspian could get Peter to _listen_ to him.

Caspian feels like he could hate Peter, or like Peter could be his brother ... something about him is exasperating, like an itch he can't scratch, like a painting hung wrong, somehow out of place and irritating. He wants to mount a _raid_ , for Aslan's sake, the very first day he arrives!

But, because he can't do anything about High King Peter the Magnificently Irritating, Caspian instead finds a proper shirt to wear under his brigandine, and arms up. On the other side of the room, Peter does the same. He looks up, once, and catches Caspian's eye. Ghost-fingers brush along Caspian's wrist, where he's buckling a vambrance, and he has to look away.

 _'Whatever happens out there today, please don't think any differently of me.'_ says someone in the back of Caspian's mind, tentatively, uncertainly. The words have some ring to them, like he should remember them or pay attention to them better, like they meant something to him once, but he can't put his finger on it right now.

When he looks back again, Peter is still watching him.

'If you've got something to say, now's the time to say it,' Caspian points out, perhaps a little more harshly than he meant. But the words are on the tip of his tongue, like some script he barely remembers learning but knows the cues for. Peter blinks. More words, more argument bubble up - Caspian can't leave this alone. 'You're treating them like soldiers, Peter, and they're not. This can't be done.'

'It can,' Peter says, and he leans in, face alight with enthusiasm, too close. Too close and yet Caspian for some reason wants to pull him closer. 'We're going to make Miraz rue the day he took the throne. All we need to do is get them ready for battle and the rest will take care of itself.'

'How?' Caspian has no patience for blind enthusiasm over tactics. He pulls himself away from Peter, tries to reassert himself over whatever it is that's got into him.

Peter regards him blue and unblinkingly for a second. 'You've just got to believe in them.' He shrugs like Susan, with certainty. 'Because if you don't, they'll sense it and the battle will be lost before it's even begun.'

***

They send Edmund in first. He grins at Peter when the plan is outlined, and wriggles his fingers in anticipation. Peter, Susan and Caspian, and a few others, will go in next, infiltrating by means of gryphons, while the rest of the army will await the opening of the drawbridge. Reepicheep and his mice, of course, will make their own way in and help get the place open.

Edmund rolls his head from side to side, loosening his shoulders, before a gryphon picks him up bodily, talons hooked under the leather straps of his cuirass. Even leaving the ground, he looks a good deal more relaxed than his brother, who clearly suffers from either nerves or overenthusiasm. Peter strides around, watching Edmund and the gryphon get further and further away, and tugging on the straps and buckles of his own armour as if he doesn't quite trust that they're done up tight enough.

Susan, meanwhile, is calmly checking the contents of her quiver. Catching her eye and nodding at Peter, Caspian asks her, 'Are you frightened?'

She pauses, running a finger under a plastron to ease the cloth beneath, and sees where he's looking. 'Not in the slightest,' she says, smiling tightly, and he believes her. Caspian supposes, with Peter, Edmund and Lucy to look after, each of them their own brand of impulsive, she'd have to be fairly unflappable. She looks back over her shoulder and braces herself. Caspian, too busy watching her (noticing things like the demure and fascinating movement of her bodice over her neat, curved waist), doesn't brace, and is almost swept over as he's swept up.

Flying is colder than he'd thought, and slower, as well. Slow enough that he has time to think, which is the last thing he wants. Instead he plans - where he will go, what he will do. He knows the castle like the back of his hand - time to put that into use.

The shock of stone under his feet when he touches down is a brief discomfort before battle-fever takes hold. Caspian loves this part.

One guard, two guards in heaps on the floor, and they're in. Caspian sees Peter and Susan head upstairs, but he has another place to go. The scales on his brigandine rustle against the walls as he waits for a patrol, half-asleep and unsuspecting, to go past. He drops a level, skirting round night-cooks and chambermaids, and then another, to guards again, this time with keys clinking on their belts.

The Professor is chained by his ankles in a windowless cell. Caspian has to grab one of the guards, hand over mouth, and snaffle his keyring. They leave the poor man gagged on his own tunic in the cell (locked in, of course), and they run. Caspian, again, has a sense he's done this before.

He must have been such a sinner in a past life.

'I didn't break you out of here to see you break back in again,' the old man wheezes as they run.

'I'm not on my own,' Caspian points out. 'The Kings and Queens ... they came back, Professor.'

Cornelius just raises an eyebrow, apparently too tired to even express surprise. Caspian yanks him into an alcove near the stables, to let him catch his breath.

'Where are they now?' he eventually manages.

'Gone after Father,' Caspian says distractedly, trying to work out where to hide the professor until the battle is done, and completely not expecting to be grabbed by the shoulders. Cornelius's face is frantic.

'Don't underestimate Miraz,' he rasps. 'He has disowned you - Prunaprismia's son is the heir now. Neither of them will be merciful to you.'

'I don't want mercy,' Caspian retorts. 'I want justice in Narnia, for the Narnians as well as the Telmarines.'

'You won't get it,' Cornelius points out. 'He named you for a traitor.'

'We have to try.'

Caspian leaves his tutor in the hidden little spot and ventures on to find Peter and Susan ... and his father, too. He jogs carefully through the hallways he used to play in as a child, naked sword in hand, and tells himself he's prepared to kill his father to settle this thing.

It's a lie. He makes vague plans for capture and his father's surrender, but he knows they won't work - Miraz is too proud. Too proud and too cunning - keeping the man in the How would be far too dangerous. Keeping a dragon in your castle would be about as sensible.

Caspian pauses before he reaches his father's doors - takes a deep breath - and then bursts in, fully expecting a stand-off in progress. Instead, the room is dark and quiet, or it was until he threw himself clanking into it, and his father slams bolt upright in bed, hand scrabbling for the dagger that lives beneath his pillow. Beside him, Prunaprismia is slower to wake but no slower to grab for a weapon - a crossbow from her bedside table.

No-one moves, just for a second.

And then Peter and Susan charge into the room. Caspian's stepmother immediately trains her bow on Peter. 'Hello, Caspian,' says Prunaprismia, not taking her eye from the crossbow's sight. 'Welcome home. You've brought friends with you, I see.' Her voice is even, despite all the excitement.

Caspian doesn't say anything, too focused on his father.

'Put that down,' Miraz says exasperatedly. 'You're not going to do this, Caspian. I raised you to be more intelligent, for a start.' He rolls his eyes. 'Right now, boy, you have a rebellion. Shoot me, and you'll have a war.'

Echoing in his head somewhere, someone says _'You are my son, you will not strike an unarmed man,'_ and they didn't know him any better than Miraz - Father - does.

 _'I no longer think of myself as your son,'_ is the retort. Caspian nearly says it out loud.

'It may have escaped your attention,' he points out instead, gritting his teeth against this flood of will o' the wisp memory. 'But this is a war. It's generally considered an act of war to break into a king's bedchamber armed.'

'Your silly little hit-and-run game only becomes a war when I say so. You're my son. Right now, this is nothing more than a bit of disobedience.' He's so _arrogant_ , he thinks he's got all the power even when he's dressed in a nightshirt and defended by nothing but a dagger. Caspian trembles with fury, fury at being pushed to this point.

'Father-' he starts, stepping forward. _'I no longer think of myself as your son,'_ says someone with Caspian's voice coldly in the back of his head, again and again and again.

'This is ridiculous,' snarls Prunaprismia, and looses her bolt.

'Peter!' Susan cries, and fires her own bow (a longbow indoors, not the best choice of weapon), but Caspian lunges to knock Peter out of the way, and the quarrel grazes the thick muscle of his shoulder, and in that confused few seconds, Caspian's father and step-mother dart out of the door.

Barely a breath later, the alarm sounds. They are discovered.

'The gatehouse,' Peter says, scrabbling to his feet from under Caspian's weight and bolting out the door. Susan and Caspian chase after him. Down stairs and through doors, not even pausing except to parry cuts aimed at them by the scrambling defenses, and then out into the big courtyard. Caspian sees Peter run for the big wheel that lowers the drawbridge, and sighs inwardly even as he goes to help.

'It's too late, we have to call off the attack!' Susan cries, somewhat despairingly, as Peter struggles with the heavy mechanism.

'No, I can do this!' Peter insists breathlessly. 'Help me!'

She probably thinks Caspian can't hear her, but as they all strain to open the way into the keep, Susan hisses at her brother 'Exactly who do you think you're doing this for, Peter?' and Peter's face is set like stone. Caspian winces as he hauls on ropes - the slice to his shoulder is pulling and bleeding, not badly, but badly enough to hamper him. Finally the drawbridge thumps down and the portcullis rattles skywards and in floods the Narnian army.

'For Narnia!' Peter roars desperately, and charges. Susan and Caspian, again, charge after him. This is Caspian's first battle. It doesn't feel like it. It feels too familiar, the clang and roar like some dreadful tune he's known since birth, and maybe this is what they mean by having a fate, maybe Caspian's fate is to be a warrior, but it's more like recollection than like aptitude, and this sensation has been plaguing him since the Kings and Queens arrived.

He doesn't want these memories. He's not sure they're his to carry, he's not sure they're his to listen to, and every time he looks at Peter in the fighting, graceful and fluid even blood-stained, sweat-tousled, he catches the edge of one that makes the bottom drop out of his gut and a blush ride high over his cheekbones. That _can't_ be his memory.

No matter what's in his mind's eye, though, when he looks out over the battle he can see it's a bloody, noisy mess. Father manages to get his archers all around the main courtyard, and then it doesn't matter what the ferocity or the heart of the soldiers below, it's still like shooting fish in a barrel. Caspian knows they'll have to call a retreat soon or be cut off and massacred - he bolts for the Professor and the stables. As he ducks inside he sees Edmund dive for the guard captain, diverting the archers' fire for a moment.

When he finally gets the Professor to the stables, the horse baulks at the sight of the old man, and the old man baulks equally at the sight of the horse - in the end Caspian hauls the man into the saddle despite everyone involved's protests, and thunders back out hanging on for dear life with his knees, two sets of lead reins taking up his hands, and praying to whoever can hear him that the gate hasn't fallen yet.

It hasn't. Yet. But Peter is finally sounding a retreat. Caspian slows to a trot alongside him, waiting for the High King to swing himself aboard before trying to rally the soldiers.

There is an ominous clanking noise, and a sudden cataclysmic crash, and then the clink-clink-clink of chain links slipping -

'Get them out!' Peter bellows, turning his horse once more to circle the courtyard, urging their people to retreat. Glenstorm has Susan, but Edmund is nowhere to be seen, and the gate is descending, faster and faster. But it never hits - instead there is the damp thud of metal hitting flesh. A minotaur has caught the portcullis, the bar at the bottom cutting cruelly into his shoulders, and around him the rest of the Narnian army swirl like leaves, escaping.

Caspian and the Professor duck under, then Susan and Glenstorm, then finally Peter. And then the Minotaur sighs and sags, and falls.

Half their army is trapped, and Peter and Caspian both stop and turn back, but it's no good, and the men know it. They shout at their commanders to run, and knowing there's no other choice, Caspian does.

Ten feet down the path, he doesn't hear the hoofbeats that would tell him Peter's following. He debates with himself about whether or not to go back for the idiot. After a moment the decision is taken out of his hands - Peter catches up.

Dawn breaks as they ride. Overhead is a lone gryphon with Edmund as passenger, and every time it flaps its monstrous wings it's like the angry snap of a royal banner to Caspian's ears. The sun is just cresting the How when they finally clatter home. Lucy comes running out of their little fortress. 'What happened?' she asks. Caspian is freeing his foot of a stirrup and helping the Professor to dismount, and can't come up with an answer anyway, so he lets the Queen's siblings answer her.

He's unprepared for Peter's vicious, bitter 'Ask _him_.'

'Me?' he demands, stung. 'You could have called it off! There was still time!'

'If you'd just kept to the plan those soldiers might still be alive,' Peter retorts, Caspian can't let it go like that, because this _stupid_ loss isn't the fault of anything but shoddy tactics and showy idiocy.

'If we'd stayed here like I suggested they definitely would be,' he points out, struggling to stay calm against a flood of outrage and betrayal.

'You called us, remember?' says Peter sardonically, halting at the entranceway to the How and grinding his teeth.

'My first mistake.'

'No, your first mistake was thinking you could lead these people.' Peter turns around and begins to stalk away again.

'Hey! I am not the one who abandoned Narnia!'

'You invaded Narnia! You have no more right to be here than your father does! Narnia's better off without the lot of you.'

Vile heat crosses Caspian's vision. When he regains control of himself he sees things as their bedraggled troops must; two generals on the eve of full-blown war, with their weapons at each other's throats. _Put the sword down, Merlin, you look ridiculous,'_ he hears echoing round his head. _'I have been trained to kill since birth,'_ and _'How can I lead men into battle if they think I'm a coward?'_

'Stop it!' Edmund shouts. Turning, focusing on Edmund, Caspian sees Trumpkin, still as death, on the ground. Lucy and Susan are with him, and Lucy is giving him drops out of her flask. Nikabrik hurries forward and hustles Caspian, bewildered, into the How.

'You've tried one ancient power, and that failed,' he says, speaking fast and low ...

***

 _Peter_

Peter is _fuming_ , and the back of his brain is still full of his soldier's cries, and how _dare_ Caspian speak to him like that? As if Caspian had right of kingship here, over Peter, who is Aslan's chosen. Over Peter, who saved his life, who can give him back his paltry little kingdom of Telmarines, and Narnia, proper, fiery, _true_ Narnia to boot.

'Don't say a word,' Peter growls at Edmund and Susan, who are both looking at him pityingly. He goes to wipe his forehead, and pauses. Something is tugging at his awareness, back behind him, something cold and -

'Peter?' Lucy looks worried, and that's enough. Peter doesn't wait for anything else - he runs, and knows his siblings will follow. Something is in the How, some Magic, and it isn't Aslan. Rhindon barely has time to clear its sheath before he hits the main chamber.

'Wait! This isn't what I wanted-'

Caspian stands transfixed in a garden of frost-flowers, in thrall to the all-too-familiar figure at the centre of the room. Peter is vaguely aware there are others in the room, but he doesn't even make it a decision - he bulls straight for Caspian, with his stomach churning in fear and exasperation _-not him, not him, never him, over my dead body--_ , knocking Caspian aside, only to be caught himself.

Behind ice, the witch's eyes are crystalline and cruel, piercing and burning. She smiles.

'Peter dear,' she coos, 'I've missed you.' She sounds so hungry, and so far away. Stretching her hand out to him, Peter can't help but reach for her in turn. 'Come on, just one drop,' she adds, the witch, the witch he's killed before.

 _Edmund killed her last time ..._

But the time before that?

Time before that?

 _Come on, Emrys,_ she laughs, in Peter's thoughts. _Don't you know me yet?_

Peter, he retorts. _My name is Peter._

You've called yourself a lot of things that aren't your name, Emrys, over the years.

There is a stink of bitter ozone when she speaks, a smell of burning, and lightning criss-crosses Peter's vision as his fingers and hers get closer and closer.

'You know you can't do this on your own,' she adds, out loud, with vicious humour in her tone

 _Pity, together we could have ruled the world_ she says, a thousand years ago, and they are a sliver apart now. She held his hand once, her fingers cold around his and his hot and desperate around a flask of healing Magic. She tempted him before, and she clearly remembers. He won't let her get the better of him this time, either ... and yet his fingers strain to reach her. _So brave, Merlin_ she says, and then she chokes, as a sword plunges through the ice that holds her spell-form. Powerless without Adam's blood, she cannot hold together when it shatters, coating the room in fragments and powder.

Merlin is thrown to one side, and vaguely registers the prone body beside him as Arthur, huddled beneath a veil of rapidly-melting ice. _It rained last time as well, afterwards,_ Merlin thinks in an addled sort of manner, before hauling himself to his feet.

Two lives hit him like giant's blows when he looks his brother in the eyes. _Lancelot,_ he almost says, but manages to choke out 'Ed,' instead, with no follow-up except for blinking dazedly.

'I know, you had it sorted,' says Edmund bitterly. Merlin stares helplessly as he leaves, realises there are three dead bodies in the room and that Trumpkin and Lucy are doing their own staring at him. Lucy's face is full of all sorts of hurt, and Trumpkin just looks utterly unsurprised, as if he expected no more of men. Together they carry Nikabrik's body out of the chamber, and still Merlin stands there, a flood and a fire going through his mind.

Eventually, it is just him and Arthur, or him and Caspian, alone by the Stone Table.

'So here we are again, then,' Caspian says, a little distantly.

'Yeah,' Merlin replies.

Caspian makes a fuss of cleaning and sheathing his sword, and then grabs a fistful of werewolf fur and starts hauling. Merlin sighs, slipping Rhindon back into its own scabbard, and joining in. The beast is heavy, and after one twist of the passageway, both of them are breathing a little harder than before. Caspian looks up to swipe the hair (longer than he ever had it before, as dark as Merlin's used to be) out of his eyes, and grins.

'By the way,' he says. 'You still look ridiculous with a sword.'

***  
 _Arthur_

And here they are again. Arthur can say that from two angles now - here he is again, watching Peter across the Stone Table as he argues about how to win this war. And here he is again, in council of war with Merlin, his most trusted ally.

Here he is again. Here who is again? It's easy to say he's Arthur in Caspian's space, Caspian's body. Arthur's the name he's had longer, he can call himself Arthur, but he can't not be Caspian - it's just as easy to call him Caspian with Arthur's memories.

He, whoever he is, watches the scene from a perch on a step, seeing how Peter handles the Narnian warriors, and thinking.

It's bizarre. He's Caspian the Tenth, son of Miraz. He was raised in a stone castle not far from Beaversdam, and he had lessons in swordsmanship from a man-at-arms, mostly fencing. He'd never killed anyone before he escaped from his father's dungeons, and part of him still roils with guilt when he thinks about the rout at the castle yesterday. He knows all of this with the same rock-solid certainty with which he knows he breathes air and walks on land.

And at the same time he knows he's Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, and that he was raised in Camelot, that his father taught him to use his heavy broadsword from the age of five, starting with lessons on lifting it, that he killed his first enemy at twelve and led knights from the age of fifteen. He feels thirty in a sixteen-year-old body.

He wonders what everyone else thinks, after seeing them draw steel on each other, and now seeing that Caspian just sits and watches Peter take charge ...

He can't help but see Merlin in Peter. The ease of him in company, the intensity with which he outlines his ideas - Merlin through and through. And the way he carries his sword ... Merlin with a sword was always a disaster, but Peter ... Peter holds a blade with the same untrained talent Merlin threw fireballs around with. Clearly no tuition, no practice, no finesse, just raw ability forced to perform. But who would have taught him? Caspian grew up with all the legends from the Golden Age, about how Peter came to Narnia as an untutored child from Spare Oom, and picked up a sword and killed the White Witch's minions, just like that.

(Hours of frustrating drill practice every day meant that little Caspian developed a burning jealousy of High King Peter and his miraculous wolf-slaying abilities, but it also meant that he got quite good at keeping his guard up even during a high strike on his left side, which is something he's noticed Peter tends to forget in the heat of the moment.)

He's beautiful, though, with a sword, just like he used to be beautiful with a palmful of fire. Deadly, dangerous, desirable, and Arthur sees him with a thirty-year-old's judgement and a sixteen-year-old's want.

Peter is arguing with the Narnians now, as his siblings and Caspian look on. Susan is clearly still furious with both of them, though keeping herself very much in check, and Edmund has the air of someone who has put his anger away for later. Lots of control, those two. Lucy, on the other hand, is perched on the Stone Table itself and watching Peter speaking with an air of eagerness and enthusiasm for his plans.

Given her brother's excellent plans appear to be putting her right in the middle of harm's way, Arthur doesn't understand why. Or why Susan and Edmund both clearly agree with the idea of wandering out into the forest hoping to bump into a lion.

Trumpkin puts it best, though. 'Haven't enough of us died already?' he asks, a little plaintively.

Arthur can see what Peter and the others are getting at. If Aslan could be found, he would be their best hope. But unless something is done to draw off the Telmarines, their best hope at finding their best hope won't even make it a mile.

They need a diversion. Something big, and showy, and time-consuming. Arthur racks his brains, and then starts to smile. Maybe he is at a disadvantage for his birth and his belief that tactics should involve some kind of logic and his not being selected for rule by a magical lion, but there are some things he's useful for, still.

'I have an idea,' he ventures, and everyone turns. Peter looks over his shoulder at Arthur, and firelight slides through his hair, and the deluge of memories slotting _Arthur_ in amongst _Caspian_ slides another little awareness delicately home, like a cardsharp laying down an ace. Arthur looks at Peter in that flirt's pose, and _knows_ that his Merlin is in there somewhere. He swallows a little harder than he might ordinarily, and continues with his suggestion. 'Miraz may be a vicious brute, but he's a Telmarine king, and as such, there are a few rules even he has to follow,' Arthur begins.

They send Edmund (always the advance party, that boy), armed with a challenge and a vicious grin, two hours later. Susan coils bowstrings, Lucy sharpens her dagger.

And Peter beckons to Arthur, and leads him deeper into the How.

'We have to talk,' he says.

***  
 _Merlin_

He withdraws down a corridor that people seldom take, Caspian's footsteps echoing behind him.

He has to know. He has to know if ... if things between them are ... he has to know _what_ things between them are. He's sixteen, he would guess Caspian to be about the same, but that doesn't mean that ...

He was in his thirties when he lost Arthur in battle. Arthur had been king ten years, had courted and lost a wife in that time, and all the while he and Merlin had been ... Well. Any of the names Merlin might choose to put to it Arthur would brush aside, scoff at, or outright object to, but they'd been something. Merlin had never made a secret of the fact that he loved Arthur fiercely.

It feels like he's of two halves, and one of them can see adventure ahead while the other's only thinking of what's gone before and doesn't know if things will be what they were, and neither half will answer to 'Peter' or 'Merlin' - they are both equally unsure.

'Peter,' Caspian says, his accent twisting the name on his tongue. It's a testament to the tenacity of both lives that Merlin can expect to be called Peter yet think of himself as Merlin all the while. Caspian reaches out and grabs Merlin by the shoulder, spinning him around. 'We have single combat to plan,' the prince points out. 'And for once, it's not my armour you'll be polishing,' he adds, smirking. It's so ... it's so Arthur, so familiar and expected that Merlin does what he would always have done, which is to push Arthur away, only to get caught by the wrist and reeled in for a kiss, just a quick, smiling peck.

Merlin stills when it happens, then decides he doesn't care, and presses closer for another, and another. Caspian is a different shape under his hands this time, but the same feel in his mouth, in his eyelashes on Merlin's cheekbones.

'So you do remember,' Merlin says when they part. 'I wondered.'

'Of course I remember, you idiot. It doesn't change anything.' Caspian moves away, locking his hands behind his back as he does so. His message is clear - hands off. Merlin would know that frustrated, ridiculous nobility anywhere.

'What doesn't?' he asks, just to be clear. Just to hear him _say_ it.

'You and me ... what we used to be. We have bigger fish to fry right now,' Caspian says, ruefully. He holds Merlin's gaze with his own, clearly willing Merlin to know what he's talking about. Merlin does. Merlin knows exactly what he means - kingdom first. War first, battle first, tactics first. Personal later.

Peter doesn't know, though, and doesn't care. Personal now, forever and always, because why would you fight if it wasn't personal? What would you have to fight for if you didn't have personal? And Merlin felt like that when he was younger, he remembers it, he remembers trying to explain it to Arthur.

Merlin has a sneaking suspicion that if they leave personal for later, it will never happen at all. Aslan tends not to let people rest on their laurels. Last time Peter won, he was High King and he had a job to do, and when Narnia was stable again, somehow he found himself pushed back out through the wardrobe. Last time Merlin saw Arthur, he was bleeding out on a foggy moorland battlefield.

Neither of him wants it to come to that again.

'What we used to be doesn't change either though,' Merlin points out. 'Does it?'

 _Are we done? Are you done with me, after all this time?_

'That never changes,' Caspian says, looking away briefly. When he turns back, he rolls his eyes. 'Looks like I'll never be rid of you.' But there's a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth as he says it.

Merlin itches to run fingers through Caspian's wayward hair, to settle his shirt neater on his shoulders. Itches to touch Caspian in all those familiar and innocent ways he used to, slow, rote-learned ways, friendly-intimate. This could be the last private moment they get - Merlin wants to make it personal. He knows how Arthur used to like the quiet time before a battle.

Caspian's hands are still locked behind his back though, and the look in his eye, which drops away every time Merlin tries to meet it, suggests that he doesn't want quiet, that if Merlin touches him things will happen. Merlin has to swallow hard and believe that he doesn't want that now, that there is no time, that they could be caught-

'The duel,' he says, changing the subject desperately. 'Just in case you were thinking of overruling me; it's _got_ to be me.'

'It's my bloody succession, I'll do the fighting,' Caspian challenges.

'And if he gets in a lucky opening? We need you for later - I'm the expendable one here.'

'He's more likely to get a lucky opening on you - you leave yourself open chronically.' They stare at each other mulishly for a few seconds, before Caspian shrugs melodramatically and barks a laugh. 'You're right. Nothing ever changes.'

'Peter,' someone calls down the passageway after them. 'Edmund's back - Miraz accepted.'

Merlin chances it, and yanks Caspian close for another kiss before answering the summons - he still can't shake the feeling that it might be his last chance. Caspian tastes of Arthur, tastes of past and future and freedom, and Merlin holds him hard and tight until footsteps tell him to let go.

 

***  
 _Arthur_

Arthur saddles his horse. It's a quiet, familiar task that takes him away from watching Peter, and watching Peter and Edmund spar, and the terrible itching temptation to call out instructions and make the pair of them drill for two weeks with quarterstaves before letting them anywhere near an edged weapon, and the even more terrible itching temptation to give in to the fact that he's sixteen and Peter's gorgeous, and he's Merlin, and there are lots of unexplored passages in this warren of a place where he's pretty sure no-one would find them if they snuck off for a few hours.

Instead of doing any of those things, then, he saddles his horse. His mouth still feels Peter's on it.

A footstep makes him look up - Susan and Lucy have entered the little chamber set aside as a stable for the few non-Talking Horses they have. Lucy looks eager - Susan looks worried.

'Destrier has been a good friend to me,' Arthur says, trying to reassure her. 'He'll look after you.'

She favours him with a smile, and ignores the hand he offers to help her mount, swinging herself into the saddle with enviable ease. He boosts Lucy up behind her sister, and then hesitates. He reaches down to the ivory horn that's hung on his belt since he ran from his father's castle, and with a tiny pang, unhooks it. He offers it to Susan.

'Maybe it is time you had this back.'

Susan looks like she's considering it, but then pushes it back towards Caspian. 'Why don't you hold on to it,' she suggests. 'You might need to call me again.' She kicks the horse into a gallop before Caspian has time to react to that.

As the sound of hoofbeats gets more distant, he thinks he hears Lucy say something.

***

 _Merlin_

As he's arming up, Merlin resists the urge to laugh hysterically at the fact that he volunteered to duel Miraz for Caspian's throne. He reminds himself again and again that he's an accomplished swordsman, that this body knows what to do, but it's hard to fight the deeper-seated memories of being smacked silly with sticks and falling over his own feet every time a weapon came into play.

Edmund straps Merlin's plate on wordlessly. Merlin, in his turn, stands there equally wordlessly. He never had a brother before, and no-one ever squired for Merlin, Court Sorceror. He used to layer his own protective spells, feel them sink into his skin like sunshine, all on his own before a battle.

The place inside him that's Peter, though, knows that this is perfectly normal. Edmund doesn't talk before fights much anyway. When the last buckle is tightened, Merlin turns to Edmund and helps him on with his own cuirass. It's familiar from both ends.

Merlin never liked to think about a battle. Not when he was close enough to it to smell oiled steel, at least. By that time, it's too late to plan and counterproductive to worry. He wonders vaguely where Caspian is, and then remembers he went to see off the girls.

After that everything comes like pebbles dropped to the bottom of a pond - heavy and slow and falling one by one.

The daylight is blinding after the gloom of the How. Miraz accepts his helmet from Glozelle and clanks over to offer a traditional greeting.

'There is still time to surrender,' he points out, very sportsmanlike.

'Well feel free,' Merlin says. Peter knows exactly everything about this kind of moment and he revels in it - Merlin isn't so sure.

'How many more must die for the throne?' Miraz asks, as if he somehow gained the moral high-ground in the night, as if the blood is all on his son's hands, on his son's allies' hands.

Merlin, whose hands were stained a thousand years ago by another war, and Peter, who knows the price of freedom from tyranny, don't fall for it.

'Just one,' he says together, and smacks his visor down.

***

 _Arthur_

Watching someone in red and gold fight a duel from afar is all wrong to Arthur's mind, and knowing it's Merlin down there without even the defence of his magic makes his gut clench, but he forces himself to watch from a high-point on the How. When he tries to think of it as Peter fighting, it doesn't help - Caspian doesn't want anyone else to bleed for him.

Something glints down to his right, and he turns, curious, to see who might have other things to do than watch two kings fight for their domain.

It looks suspiciously like a patrol. Sudden horn-calls ring out - _enemy sighted_ \- from the woods to the west.

Susan and Lucy ran west, away from the How and the Ford at Beruna, hoping to double back around and cross the Rush once more, where Lucy saw Aslan on their way to meet Caspian. And all the other Narnians are watching the duel.

Arthur bolts for the stables, praying he'll be in time.

He almost needn't have bothered - Susan kills them all bar one, whom Arthur dispatches with only a minimum of trouble. There's no sign of Lucy or the horse, and Arthur wagers Susan sent them on, thinking to halt their pursuit on her own. Arthur can admire a decision like that.

Susan herself is lying on the ground, wind probably knocked out. Arthur goes to help her up - she looks up as he nudges his horse over, and then hauls herself to a standing position using his stirrup.

She looks so put-out with herself that he can't help but jibe 'Are you sure you don't need that horn?'

The look she shoots him is a mix of exasperated and amused, and this time she lets him haul her aboard. 'Lucy?' he asks, going to spur the horse into following the trail of kicked-up leafmould that must surely mark the girl's passage.

'No point,' Susan says. 'If anyone can find Aslan, it's Lucy. And if she's right, and he's here, he won't let her get hurt.'

Arthur wishes he could be that sure. But he turns the horse back to the How anyway.

***

 _Merlin_

Miraz is older, heavier, wiser, more cunning, and almost as fast as Merlin, as he proves. At one point Merlin almost loses his head - instead he loses only his helm and coif, although the blow makes his ears ring and lights flash in front of his eyes. He goes to blast the man and realises he hasn't the ability any more - instead he strikes down, and _hard_ , and suddenly realises he's scored first blood, suddenly realises there are other instincts riding double with the ones _Merlin_ is used to, and they belong to Peter, who had this body first and who is still here, and who, really, is him as well.

There's only him here, and it doesn't matter how many names he has.

Miraz takes that moment to bowl Merlin top over teakettle and deliver a punishing stomp to his shield-arm while he's prone. His shoulder _screams_ in agony. With sickening certainty Merlin knows the arm's dislocated, useless. He kicks out instinctively, tangling his legs with Miraz's, and the older man goes down. His scalemail makes an almighty, deafening noise when he hits the ground. Hauling himself up, Merlin does his best to guard himself.

Despite the fall, Miraz is smug when he gets to his feet. 'Does his Majesty require a respite?' he asks, sneering, and he strikes a chord in Merlin's mind, like his brother and sisters do, like the White Witch did. Merlin knows him for who he is then, knows just how hard he's going to have to work for this victory.

It would be foolish not to take the opportunity of a break. Merlin can barely move his fingers. 'Five minutes?' he asks, slightly ashamed of the breathiness and pitch of his voice.

Miraz's _\- Uther's-_ face turns hard. 'Three,' he says, and stomps off.

Merlin turns and tries very hard to walk back to his side of the courtyard like everything's normal. Trying to shrug the shoulder back into place is probably the worst idea he's ever had, and he's had a few. Edmund catches him as he makes it back to the marshalls.

Caspian and Susan are there.

'Lucy?' is all Merlin can say, but they know what he's asking.

'She got through,' says Susan. 'With a little help,' she adds, glancing up at Caspian.

'Thanks,' Merlin says, and Caspian's face is guarded as he surveys the Telmarine camp. When his eyes flick back to Merlin, they're full of worry.

'Well, you were busy,' he says, feigning a casual tone.

'You'd better get up there,' Merlin suggests to his sister, nodding at the How. 'Just in case.' She doesn't need to ask, in case of what? Someone needs to be with the troops.

'Be careful,' Susan admonishes Merlin, and yanks him close for a hug, which hurts. 'Sorry,' is her parting shot. He watches her go for a moment, before a cough from his brother breaks through.

'Keep smiling,' Edmund mutters, and Merlin attempts to muster a winning pose for his watching army, before turning back to the task at hand. Between them, Edmund and Caspian manage to indicate in no uncertain terms that he needs to be sitting down. Caspian takes Merlin's shield as Edmund unstraps it.

'I think it's dislocated,' Merlin says as Edmund stretches out the damaged arm, inspecting the damage with nimble fingers.

The thinking that Merlin was trying to banish earlier bubbles up again when Edmund takes hold of Merlin's rapidly-swelling shoulder.

He's not sure who his siblings are, or who he's fighting. He keeps seeing parallels like ghosts out of the corners of his eyes, he keeps thinking he sees clues, but he can't be sure of that, can't be sure of any bloody thing except he has friends, brothers, sisters, enemies. Not who they are, but that they're around. _Lancelot_ , he almost called Edmund. He saw someone else in his brother, just for a moment, but was it just the twining of thoughts, some tendril looking to put down root wherever it could, or was it genuine? Is his brother-in-arms his brother in blood now? Merlin wishes he knew. It doesn't help that Arthur clearly doesn't remember the same - he can't, surely, or he'd have said something.

'What do you think happens back home if you die here?' he asks, overcome with a sudden rush of emotion. 'You've always been there, and I-'

Edmund shoves Merlin's shoulder back into place. The pain shuts him up fairly smartly.

'Save it for later, Pete,' is Edmund's advice, and with a click, suddenly Merlin's shoulder becomes less useless meat and more usable joint, albeit fiercely painful. Merlin rolls his arm, realises he can use it like this, despite the ache and burn.

Miraz is getting up, across the courtyard, so Merlin does likewise. Caspian gives him back his shield and offers him his helmet, which someone must have picked up earlier. He accepts the former gingerly, but refuses the latter with a shake of his head, and strides back out.

Somewhere behind him Edmund and Caspian both mutter _Idiot_ , but Miraz clearly remembers at least the appearance of good sportsmanship, and leaves his own helmet off as well.

They fight. It's such a simple word for such a simple thing, such a familiar thing. Peter duelled first at the age of ten, duelled often until he was called back to England, and he knows the steps by heart. Merlin disarms Miraz only to be disarmed in turn, and to have to turn away blows with his vambrances until an opening appears.

He punches Miraz's injured thigh with a plate gauntlet, and the man's face goes white.

'A respite! A respite!' he calls. Merlin shrugs; he won't refuse a request like that, even when he has the upper hand.

'Now's not the time for chivalry, Peter,' Edmund calls from the sidelines, as Merlin turns. A screech of armour makes him whip back round again though, catching the darting blade Miraz was aiming at his shoulders on his vambrances again and twisting it free. Before he knows quite what he's done, Miraz is bleeding, run through. Merlin's never killed because he'd thought about it and decided to, only ever in the heat of the moment, and this is no different.

'What's the matter boy?' Miraz wheezes, with the humour of the dying man. 'Too cowardly to take a life?'

Miraz's life is ended anyway, Merlin still remembers enough of Gaius's teaching to know that, but a slow death on a pallet somewhere isn't a victory, and that's what Miraz is talking about. Too cowardly to win? he's asking.

'It's not mine to take,' Merlin mutters instead, and offers the stolen blade to Caspian. He takes it. Caspian wants to win, after all.

But Miraz is a talkative corpse. 'Perhaps I was wrong,' he says as his son takes a steady aim. 'Maybe you do have the makings of a Telmarine king after all.'

Caspian grits his teeth, lifts the blade higher ... and then roars in anger and buries the blade in the grass at Miraz's knees. 'Not one like you,' he hisses. 'Keep your life, but I am giving the Narnians back their kingdom.'

King Caspian turns, goes to stride back to the How. He brushes against Merlin's side as he goes, a hip-bump that says in the language of old, old friends, 'Are you with me?'

There is a sudden commotion behind them. 'They killed our king!' Sopespian is shouting. 'Treachery!'

'Back to the How,' Merlin bellows, and Caspian goes. Of all the plans they talked through, this is the one Merlin liked least, but he has no choice now. He feels the heat of Caspian's touch through his breeches. Of course he's with him

But if Lucy didn't get through, they are sunk.

***  
 _Arthur_

Arthur bolts back inside, gathering Narnians from left and right. They know what the plan is for this situation - Glenstorm and Reepicheep talked everyone through it at length - and they ready themselves. Destrier is brought to Caspian, and he, the Centaurs and Minotaurs, the Talking Horses and Stags and the Unicorns, line themselves up behind their few Giants.

As soon as he can hear the pounding of massed footsoldiers in step come through the ground, Arthur starts to count under his breath, and signals the advance.

'... three, four ...' he mutters, seeing the Giants start to take aim at the pillars that keep this tunnel from collapsing.

The noise from above gets louder and louder - Peter's forces must have engaged the advance party of Telmarines. There's a rumbilng directly above now. Arthur keeps them moving until the noise passes.

'Now!' he cries. The first hit showers clods of soil and bits of rock everywhere. A pebble sings off Arthur's kneecap as a ramp of earth opens up before him and he and the Narnians burst into blazing sunshine, outflanking the Telmarine cavalry. A yawning pit opens up bit by bit as weight and damage cause the original opening to collapse further and further, and it eats the Telmarines like a kraken, grabbing them seemingly out of nowhere. Seeing that working afoot will serve him better near the pit, Arthur dismounts and begins.

It's a never-ending task. They are outnumbered, Arthur can't even count how many by, and for a while it becomes almost mechanical; thrust, parry, chop, parry, parry, his fingers slipping in blood on his sword hilt, tasting iron and salt every time he takes a breath, until the ground booms like a drum. Arthur's legs try to give under him as already failing land breaks further. He looks up and sees catapults and a forest of pikemen behind the Narnian ranks. They've outflanked the enemy only to be outflanked themselves.

The Telmarines have started bombardment. The noise and the impact make everyone pause, and Arthur looks instinctively back to the How, their haven. Other Narnians have heard the noise and started to run back to that haven, but they don't get far. The entrance caves in.

A stifled yelp makes Arthur look up, only to see Susan hang by her fingertips from the ledge the archers have been perched on. As he watches, she slips and falls, managing to swing herself onto another ledge, and then climb down. Arthur fights his way back towards her, as do her brothers, as she manages to climb down to what passes for firm ground.

Matter-of-factly she dusts herself off, and raises an eyebrow at her brothers and Caspian. They in turn look at each other, and then back at their army. There suddenly aren't any more options.

'Narnia!' Peter shouts, and Arthur feels the battlecry ripped from his own throat as well.

They charge.

***  
 _Merlin_

He can't see Caspian anywhere.

Edmund is off to his right, wielding two swords and a frankly terrifying expression, and Susan is in sight as well, mechanically weeding out the ranks of the pikemen any time one of them shows a sliver of an eye. But no Caspian.

Camlann plays over and over in his mind - he wasn't fast enough, he wasn't _there_ \- and so much else has replayed and reset itself that he can't trust that this isn't Camlann again. He twists and ducks and searches, desperately, for a leather-and-chainmail body amongst so many leather-and-chainmail bodies. Who on earth decided to let Caspian wear Telmarine gear? Haven't they heard of a uniform?

Suddenly above the constant thumping of bombardment, the earth gives off a rumble, then a roar. Turning, Merlin sees reinforcements he'd never even hoped to get, (the trees, the trees, like great Birnam wood come to high Dunsinane hill, wouldn't Peter's English master be proud?) and Glozelle, Miraz's general, clearly going in for a kill. Merlin starts to jog, then run towards him, a horrible premonition growing in his mind, and cursing the weight of plate armour as it hangs heavy on his bad shoulder.

He gets to the Telmarine, but not in time to kill him before a tree does. A taproot relieves him of that office, yanking the man viciously back into the earth with a sickening crunch.

Caspian looks dazed and bewildered when Merlin pulls him to his feet (his hand is warm though), and he just quirks an eyebrow at the mobile trees. Merlin grins, battlefevered, and shouts 'Lucy!' with fierce joy in Caspian's ear.

'Fall back!' the Telmarines are calling, 'To Beruna! To Beruna! Fall back!' and the Narnians give chase as they run.

***

 _Arthur_

He knew that Aslan would be a powerful ally, and he knew that the Narnians and the Pevensies were fairly convinced that if Aslan should turn up, the battle would definitely be won, but they go from pursuit to cleanup literally in minutes. As miracles go, it's fairly speedy, and a little breathtaking.

Arthur's glad; it means extra time to pretend there's not an enormous lion watching him a little too knowingly.

'Give me that,' he says to a Telmarine soldier still waving a sword. Admittedly he's waving it by the wrong end, so Arthur doesn't feel the need to be too harsh with him. The man hands it over fairly amiably anyway.

Eventually there's no other choice. Peter nudges him and then grabs his elbow, pulling him to his knees. It's not a stance that's familiar to him.

There's just a suggestion of a laugh in the voice that says 'Arise, Kings and Queens of Narnia.' Around him, Arthur can hear the others getting to their feet, but he's not about to claim privileges he doesn't deserve. You're not a king until you're crowned. That's a lesson he learnt very well. So he stays firmly knelt until that warm, faintly amused voice says,

'All of you.'

Gingerly, Caspian looks up, and then stands up. 'I do not think I am ready,' he says, which is the truth. Not to do this on his own, at least.

'It is for that very reason that I know you are.'

Peter elbows Arthur in the ribs as if he knows exactly what eyerolling thoughts he's thinking.

***

 _Merlin_

He barely sees Caspian. For a week, a mortal _week_ his life has been nothing but parades and meetings and important ceremonies greeting the leaders of the Centaurs and the Leopards and the Talking Mice and various other factions, all of whom he's met before, on or near a battlefield generally, and it most certainly has not escaped his notice that meanwhile, King Caspian has been getting on organising and meeting and greeting the important Telmarine leaders, the nobles and village headmen and wise old crones and so on and so forth.

And every night Merlin has tumbled into bed alone, tired, with an aching shoulder and a growing sense of resignation. They are going to amalgamate these two societies by whatever happens to be the path of least resistance, and then ...

Then they are going to go home.

It's always Merlin's job to get Arthur on a throne. Whatever it is that assigns that job never bothers to specify what happens after. Afterwards, he's surplus again.

He's straightening the ridiculous tunic that's the height of Telmarine fashion at the moment (oh how he _yearns_ for a shirt and a pair of breeches, his school uniform, something without _ruffles_ , at least) and scowling at himself in the mirror when a knock sounds at his bedroom door.

'Hello?' Susan pops her head in. 'Ah, there you are, Peter. Aslan says he wants to talk to us.' She doesn't look entirely comfortable with the notion, probably because she knows as well as he does what this is going to be about.

But they walk down to the courtyard together anyway, the perfect picture of sibling royalty, with Susan deftly managing to look elegant and unfussed in her little boots and her bustle, while Merlin strictly refuses to let himself fuss further with the hem of his tunic. Aslan is waiting for them by the gates, and they take a very civilised turn around the courtyard, conversing, like they didn't just lose half of their forces here two weeks ago.

The conversation is fairly innocuous - Aslan questions Susan about the reestablishment of trade with Galma, and Merlin on the addition of Fauns to the palace guard, and then -

'You will go home tomorrow,' Aslan says. 'No, Peter,' he adds, forestalling Merlin's _'But-'_. 'Caspian must learn to stand on his own, and you have your own lives to go back to.'

 _Tomorrow_.

The rest of the conversation is a blur, really, because that word is where Merlin gets stuck. Tomorrow. He goes home tomorrow. Home to Finchley, to be Peter Pevensie all the rest of his life, no Narnia, no Caspian, no _Arthur_ ...

Aslan lets them go, and Merlin goes.

He catches Glenstorm in the courtyard. 'Have you seen Caspian?' he asks, hoping beyond hope that there isn't another stupid meeting this afternoon. He needs to talk to Caspian, he has to. He can't just get sent away like this again, he can't leave Arthur behind in another world again. Avalon or Narnia, it doesn't matter - he won't just go quietly this time, he won't just go without saying goodbye.

Glenstorm must see some of his urgency, because he says 'His Majesty has gone to the practice courts,' with no preamble, and then a smile. 'If you hurry, you can catch him, I expect.'

Merlin nods, tries a grin, and takes to his heels again.

He jogs frantically through the hallways of the castle. Footsteps echo ahead.

'Hello?' Caspian turns. 'Who's there?' A week of civilisation still hasn't smoothed the twitch out of the fingers of his sword-hand.

'Me,' Merlin says, skittering to a halt. 'Just me,' he adds, hopefully to forestall being smacked with a wooden practice blade.

'Hello,' Caspian says again.

'Are you busy?'

'No,' says Caspian. He sighs. 'No, I am not busy. For the first time since the battle of Beruna, I am not busy, and I was hoping to have a little time alone.'

'So was I,' Merlin says brightly. 'That is, time alone with you. Um. If you want to?'

Caspian puts his head to one side, thinking about it, and then smiles, slightly wolfishly. 'Excellent.' He grabs Merlin by his wrist and starts walking.

'What are we- where are we going?'

'We're going to spend some time alone together,' Caspian says wickedly.

Which is how Merlin finds himself practicing a high block off his left side. Repeatedly. While Caspian calls out instructions.

'This is not exactly what I meant,' Merlin pants after what feels like the fiftieth set of repetitions. He can feel the sweat dripping down the back of his shirt.

'Oh, I know,' says Caspian airily. He saunters closer. 'Hold it there,' he adds, eyeing the line of Merlin's arm. He ducks around, and runs a hand along Merlin's spine. 'You're improving,' he remarks, leaving his hand at the small of Merlin's back.

'And you're inhuman,' Merlin complains. 'Can we at least go inside? You could watch me polish some armour for a while, you always used to like that.'

'I can think of a number of things I used to like,' Caspian says, crooking his fingers against Merlin's skin. 'Some of them you even used to like, as well.'

'I'd probably like them better if I could put my arm down,' Merlin reminds him. It's sort of starting to ache now.

'Go ahead.' As Merlin drops his arm, Caspian slips his hand lower, slyly. Being sixteen again suddenly seems to have a lot of potential.

'Inside?' Merlin suggests, controlling the pitch of his voice very carefully.

'Good idea.'

***  
 _Arthur_

Afternoon sunlight is harsh when you haven't slept. Arthur's eyes are burning in it, wanting desperately to squint in the fact of reflections off armour and jewellery as he faces, for the first time as King, all of his people, and asks if they want to leave. Go away, through Magic, to some other place, where there are no Narnians to upset them. It's no surprise, really, when his stepmother takes his half-brother through the door, and it's even less of a surprise when other nobles protest, cry foul and treachery when Prunaprismia disappears.

'Sire, if an example will prove useful, I will take eleven Mice through with no delay,' Reepicheep instantly volunteers. Some of the Telmarines quieten at that. If a Mouse will go, a fierce and loyal Mouse ... Arthur is glad to see that some of his new subjects are able to stop and think.

Behind him, quietly, the one voice he didn't want to hear says, 'We'll go.'

Arthur's heart sinks, just as quietly, although Peter said as much last night, when they were tangled up in sheets and each other, and maybe he was paying attention to other things at the time.

'We will?' Edmund asks.

'Come on, time's up. After all, we're not really needed here any more.' Peter's looking at Arthur as he says it, and unbuckling his sword-belt. He hands Rhindon over, and although they're standing on dry land, in hot sunshine, Arthur feels the chill of fog down his spine, just for a second, and fancies he hears the slap of lake water on muddy banks.

'Just once,' Peter whispers as Arthur's fingers brush his on the scabbard, 'I'd like it if you managed to hang on to a sword I give you. I'm fond of this one.'

'I will look after it until you return,' Arthur says, loud enough for the crowd.

'I'm afraid that's just it. We're not coming back.' Susan looks sadly at her brother, and at Arthur as she says it. Oh, far too perceptive, that one.

'We're not?'

Peter turns to Lucy now, Lucy and Edmund, who apparently were not included in the special little talks with Aslan that Arthur kept glimpsing. 'You two are, at least, I think he means you to.'

Arthur knows how Lucy feels, wishes he could let his emotions through as she does. It's not _fair_.

Instead, he buckles Peter's sword-belt on, glad of a reason to look away as they say their goodbyes. A presence at his shoulder causes him to look up - it's Susan. She glances back at her older brother, then says 'I'm glad I came back.' It's clear she's not only speaking for herself.

'I wish we had more time together,' Arthur replies. And he means it, too. Susan never once gave him the impression she thought him anything but competent, she supported him quietly against her brothers' opposition in that first council in the How. But he's not only speaking to her, either.

'It would never have worked anyway,' Susan says after a second, again glancing back to Peter. She gives Arthur a champion flirtatious smile.

'Why not?'

'I am thirteen hundred years older than you,' she laughs, raising a smile out of him as well. She can't possibly know how wrong she is, and Arthur isn't about to correct her.

It takes him by surprise to feel her lips on his. When she hugs him, sisterly, she murmurs 'Sometimes I have to do the things he can't,' into Arthur's ear, her arms tight around his waist. It's not the same; she's shorter, she curves in unfamiliar places, but it's all he has to hang on to. Arthur buries his face in dark, silken hair one last time, and remembers.

FIN


End file.
